


A Critical Introduction

by Verbyna



Series: Waking Slow [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Writing & Publishing, Codependency, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 03:16:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki doesn’t cross his fingers when he’s typing. That’s how he wrote his bestsellers; he purged Tony’s influence over and over, steady like the seasons, like an exposed nerve on the cusp of too much stimulation, while Tony raged and changed the world around them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Critical Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to FelicityGS for not batting an eyelash when I dropped this in her inbox in the middle of an unrelated conversation.

It doesn’t start with a punch at Frigga’s funeral; more tellingly, it doesn’t end there, either.

Tony’s face is sunlit and shocked in the mourners’ silence. Thor’s hand comes down on Loki’s shoulder, as if to pull him back or step forward to pick up where Loki left off, but Loki jerks free and steps back from the circle around the lip of the grave.

 _Are you okay?_ Tony mouths at him, and it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever said, and that’s saying something, so Loki shakes his head and walks all the way out of the crowd - all the way to Tony’s car, past Happy’s horribly sympathetic face, to the bottle of bourbon Tony left on the leather backseat.

By the time Tony’s in the car too, the back of Loki’s tongue is sore and Tony’s grimacing. He looks at Loki for a long moment and pulls a flask from the inner pocket of his jacket.

Loki sleeps on the plane ride back to NYC, and that’s the most terrible thing of all: he still trusts Tony to be awake when he’s not, to save his retribution for times when Loki can fight back.

He still trusts Tony to be fair when the stripper pole on the plane has Loki’s fingerprints all over it and Tony’s hunching over bruised organs. 

 

*

 

In school, Tony skipped ahead twice until he was in Loki’s year.

They got along like a house on fire. Loki was the house, tinder and closed-off spaces; Tony was the spark, and Loki didn’t try to keep his distance when Tony lighted on him.

He didn’t know he was a writer when he met Tony, but then the words came to fill the spaces Tony had carved in him. The words came, and they didn’t hurt as much as they cleansed, so Loki drank and typed his first published story at three in the morning in Tony’s bathroom, listening to Tony’s moans from the bedroom.

Loki doesn’t cross his fingers when he’s typing. That’s how he wrote his bestsellers; he purged Tony’s influence over and over, steady like the seasons, like an exposed nerve on the cusp of too much stimulation, while Tony raged and changed the world around them.

The only thing that never changed was Tony’s focus on Loki. Because Loki is vicious and unfair and unsteady, and it takes a special kind of thirst to withstand being loved by him, torn apart over and over in thinly veiled attacks and never asking for mercy.

Loki is a house and Tony is a fire. What’s tinder and what’s flame was never up for question, even when Tony bought Odin’s company and said Thor might have been the better son.

 

*

 

Pepper wakes them up, and Loki thinks, _why not her?_

Why can’t he love Pepper instead? Why can’t Tony?

Then he remembers that he met Tony first, and Pepper pretends not to notice when Tony breaks things just so he knows they were worth breaking.

 

*

 

Loki tried not to be popular, but with Thor for a big brother and Tony for a friend, there were no shadows big enough for him. It took him a while, but he learned to bask in the attention. He learned, like a toddler learning steps, how to walk with a crowd that cheered when he failed and when he succeeded. He learned to tell the difference.

Thor went on to be the dutiful son, but Loki left Chicago and its strangely-named blonds for NYC’s parties and publishing houses. He wrote books about it without ever mentioning the looming gaps that came before the plot, the home and family and broken trust that soured the characters.

His readings are very popular, just like Thor’s interviews and Tony’s keynote speeches.

Thor left Loki half-finished when he chose the company. Tony pushed that mess in the limelight. Loki is past wishing and hoping, past crawling, but there’s a moment right before he opens his mouth when he’s not sure whose voice will come out.

When it’s not his own, it’s Frigga’s. And Tony was right, so Loki had to hurt him back for it, because he could’ve been a good son if Tony hadn’t thrown his doors wide open.

 

*

 

There are things Loki doesn’t do, for the sake of preserving his sanity.

He doesn’t read Tony’s IAmA replies, even though he mines reddit for inspiration. He doesn’t call Tony in the early morning, when it could be anyone picking up the phone. He doesn’t make other friends, because Tony would put himself squarely in the middle and take them away, always brighter than everyone else.

There are things Loki doesn’t do, and things he only does with Tony, like putting flowers on Frigga’s grave. She liked Tony, and in Loki’s latest story she was Tony’s mother, plotting against her husband to push Tony out of the nest.

There are things Loki does to stay grounded, like grip stripper poles and imagine flowers breaking down into the ground until they reach his mother. Like read his writing out loud in his own voice, or throw punches in front of his brother to prove it wasn’t his weakness that she loved, but the strength to be ungentle in broad daylight.

She visited him sometimes. She complicated things, but he loved her all the more for it. For being his mother and saying _you need to talk to him_ , then praising the books he wrote instead.

She wasn’t gentle, but she taught Loki how to make a home of exile. There are things she would want him to do, and some day he’ll cross them all off the list, but until then there’s pain like embers against his insides, and it keeps him warm enough to walk away from her tombstone, away from the city she never tied him to.

 

*

 

He measures his life in twelve hour sections.

It takes twelve hours to pull himself back together, Chicago to NYC in a rental with the radio running, and twelve hours to shore himself up for Chicago before stepping on a private jet and leaving everything he’s built behind.

Twelve hours to stop feeling like the things Tony takes when he puts his hands down Loki’s pants aren’t irreplaceable, then twelve more to believe it.

His lucky number is thirteen. The reviews can harp on about how liminal his writing is all they want, but Loki has never been able to see luck as anything except the breath after a sting subsides, after the end has come and gone and he’s still standing.

He may not be able to turn away from Tony when he’s spread out in Loki’s bed, single or king, but he can always walk away when it’s over. He can always count to safety in his head: twelve hours until Tony’s flavor of the night is gone, until he can look at a draft again, until he can switch his phone back on and listen to Tony’s drunken condolences before he commandeers the jet (and carefully doesn’t think about the fact that there are dozens of missed calls on his phone but Tony was the only one brave enough to leave a message).

 

*

 

“Don’t you get tired of it?” Pepper asked him once, before she became CEO.

Tony came in and Loki didn’t answer. He counts it as a mercy.

 

*

 

A year after his mother dies, Loki has a knife to Tony’s throat.

Someone yells CUT, someone else notices the bead of blood on Tony’s throat. It wasn’t supposed to be sharp, this knife. It was supposed to be a prop, but Loki’s been carrying Frigga’s honing stone in his bag and he doesn’t need as much makeup as Tony does.

Someone is talking about calling security, but Loki’s watching Tony’s throat. He’s not swallowing. He’s not nervous at all. Tony’s right hand comes up and squeezes Loki’s wrist - once, twice, then a tap with his index and middle fingers.

“Save it,” he tells Loki, and he sounds angry. His thumb is digging into the underside of Loki’s chin, pushing his head to the nervous audience. Loki thinks he might be done counting, but Tony exhales in his ear and he’s still the only thing Loki notices even when his eyes are on a crowd that doesn’t know what to do with them.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Loki says, and puts the knife down.

Tony has one of the guns he’s been perfecting in his other hand. Loki wants the bullet that’s not there, the wound that matches the hurt, but Tony steps away and smiles at him like Loki’s a camera in his face.

“I’m not scared of you,” he says, and then he’s gone.

It’s all the permission Loki’s ever needed.


End file.
